Balochistan: Kolwah, district Kech area of Balochistan is under a large scale military operation since early Monday morning. Balor, Sigik, Kadd-e-hotel and more than a dozen villages are under siege.

All the communication lines are blocked by the ruling government and access to any information and medical aid has been denied to and from the outside world. However, some news of civilian casualties resulting from the heavy fire by helicopter gunships has leaked out to the neighbouring areas.

According to sources from the ground, Shahid Baloch, a teacher by profession and the brother of Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) commander Akthar Nadeem has paid the ultimate sacrifice of his life for the motherland on August 1, 2016 during the heavy bombardment by gunship helicopters in the area.

More than 50 Army vehicles with six Gunship helicopters are taking part in the operation. Military choppers are continuously shelling the mountainous areas and the settlements, while armed troops are moving from Kolwah to Hoshab, which covers more than 50 km.

All such operations have ended up with dozens of civilians killed and many more went missing in the past. This operation will also add names in the list of missing people, illegally abducted by the military personnel to be tortured and executed at unknown locations. And the knowledge of all these acts will be completely denied by the government.

The names of the persons that have been enforced disappeared during this operation, reported in the media so far are as follows:

Naimat s/o Mahmood Khan

Allah Bakhsh s/o Murad

Mohd Hasal s/o Guhram

Gazeer s/o Arzi Mohammad

Akhtar s/o Sadiq

Sameer Baloch s/o Naseer

Maroo

Alim Baloch s/o Azeem

Political analysts on Balochistan believe that this operation is related to the ongoing so-called development of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Frontier Works Organization (FWO) an administrative branch of the Pakistan Army has started work on the second route from Hoshab to Kolwah then to Lasbela. Pakistan army is using brutal tactics to harass and subdue the Baloch populace in support of the project. Pakistan army wants the residents of the area to migrate and abandon their ancestral lands in order to weaken the resistance to CPEC.

Baloch organizations have been continuously appealing to the international media and human rights bodies to visit Balochistan and assess the situation. But such efforts have been strongly blocked by Islamabad while foreign journalists as well as UNHRC teams were harassed and chased out of Balochistan in the recent years.